The Aristeia of a High School War Hero
by Seph Lorraine
Summary: After 12 years of effortlessly gliding through public school, ignorant of girls, dates and people in general, Sasuke is in love. But Gaara isn't about to back down without a fight.  AU
1. Prelude

Hi. This is not only my first work of Naruto fanfiction, but my first work of anime fanfiction in years, so please be kind. This is a semi-lighthearted AU high school scenario, so there are many stereotypes to be had, but I hope this can defy some of those over-used plot devices and become something genuinely interesting and enjoyable for you. And also:

**aristeia** (Greek: "excellence") _n._ a scene (such as in Homer's _Iliad_) of great elaboration depicting the majesty of a great hero's finest moments in battle

March 5, 2011

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**The Aristeia of a High School War Hero**

by Seph Lorraine

* * *

The schoolyard was alive with students, moving about energetically, trying to work out pent up nerves from sitting through three periods of mundane classes. Beneath the overhanging brick siding of a hallway leading to the cafeteria, a group of teens goofed about a pair of stone benches, while a group of girls dominated the table and chairs near the exit of the math wing, scooting over to make room for their friends, but keeping watchful eyes upon the door.

At the precise stroke of 12:35, a senior would come strolling through those doors like clockwork. He would push open the door, glance at his watch (a classic, antiqued brass with mother of pearl face and silver inlay), cast a cursory glance at the group of tittering girls, and cross the yard into the cafeteria. There he would toss down a brown paper bag with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a ziplock bag of red grapes next to another senior with dark red hair and a formidable tattoo, and have lunch.

It was baffling, really, why this group of bubbling chicklettes waited everyday for this precise moment. Not for the squeaky opening of the rusty green door. Nor for the startled company incurred by sandwich-to-table contact. Not even for the sheer image of beauty as the dark haired senior passed by their table in a manner that could only be described as 'slinking'. No, it was for that sheer moment, somewhere around 12:35:43AM, when those deep pools of soulful emo would turn up-no doubt with the grace of a black swan taking flight towards the glowing moon-from that delicate wristlet to glance at them.

He would glance. A moment of honest recognition. A moment of understood familiarity. Nonetheless, a binding connection until gradutation between him and the whimpering table of dollfaces.

He was the dark, dreary emo sun that lit their skies and hearts a'fire.

They were an affirmation that yes, he was almost to the cafeteria.

The lunch buzz did not stop with him, however, like that unfortunate group thought it did: Right by the exit of the cafeteria, through a pair of glass doors, a group of students flung pudding at one another on white plastic spoons. Not five paces from them a group of boys assaulted a stingy vending machine. And at the far end of the courtyard, beyond a group of girls munching celery and pretzels and practicing yoga, barely concealed by the outcropping of the band room, three boys stood motionlessly staring at the roof.

"Why does this always happen? I thought we were going to start kicking it more gently now." Shikamaru spoke dully, staring at the dark green gutter outcropping from the edge of the roof.

"For real, that's like the third one this week." Kiba spoke dully, narrowing his eyes at the blond to his right.

Naruto looked somewhat apologetic, "Sorry. I kinda' got distracted."

Kiba groaned, moving to step into the blond's field of vision. Across the yard, a pair of legs and a bob of carefully cropped pink hair stood joking with a group of girls, their laughter bubbling across the breezeway, "Man, you've gotta' stop moping after her. She's not even cool anymore, anyway. I mean, I hear she's on prom committee now. Real exciting."

The blond rolled his eyes, "There's nothing wrong with being social or involved." He stared a little longer, as if trying to assure himself, "And she's a good leader-figure anyway. She's really got her head on straight and stuff, you know."

Behind him, Shikamaru snorted, "And a nice rack."

"Are you shitting me right now?" The scruffy haired boy looked back at his blond friend, "She's a fangirl."

Blue eyes glared, "She's really into her hobbies."

"Yeah, _stalking_."

"She's not a stalker."

"What would you call it, then?"

The blond was quiet for a moment, "Enthusiasm?"

Shikamaru snorted again, this time accompanied with a loud scraping sound, that made the other two turn to regard him, as he stood leaning over to push the table towards the wall. "I don't know about you assholes, but I want my fucking hacky sack back."

* * *

In the cafeteria, Gaara jumped as a brown paper bag made emphatic impact with the table beside his face.

It really shouldn't have scared him anymore, at this point in the school year.

He pealed his cheek off of the table-top sluggishly, and rubbed at it, blinking several times to make himself look more lively.

Sasuke merely glanced back out the window, towards the yard through which he had come and began to unrap his lunch.

"Those damn pudding-flingers, at it again, eh." The redhead muttered as a blob of tapioca hit the window.

"Hn." The dark haired boy rolled his eyes and took a bite out of his sandwich, eyes remaining locked through the window outside.

Gaara nodded drowsily for a moment longer, but just as he had worked up the motivation to lay his head back down on the table for a hard-earned nap, the brunette spoke.

"D'you think he has a girlfriend?"

The redhead blinked his green eyes and turned in the direction of his friend's stare, his eyes came upon Neiji, from his history class, flipping listlessly through a book. "Huh. I don't know. He's not bad looking. I imagine there probably exist a few interested parties."

"Hn..." Sasuke narrowed his eyes, "I've only seen him talking to the pink-haired girl."

"Huh." Gaara frowned, not really interested. "Ok then."

"And really. Who goes after a guy who plays hacky sack at lunch?"

"Yeah..." Green eyes surveyed the table-top longingly.

The Uchiha chewed his peanut butter and jelly.

Gaara frowned and looked back out the window, "Wait. Who the hell are you talking about?"

Suddenly his eyes came to rest upon a group of boys, piling upon a table to reach the roof. At the top of that pile, resting in a teeteringly troublesome position on a spiky-haired boys back was the blond that sat in front of him in home economics. The boy whose inedible wonders, produced day by day in a cloud of smoke next to the art room, enraged their teacher and made Gaara's skin heat with arousal.

Oh no. Not him. Anyone but him.

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(_Dun dun duuuun_) To be continued.


	2. The Muses

So this story actually started as one of those pesky plot bunnies that nibbles at you when you should be studying for your Classical Mythology midterm, and apparently never got any attention again. Sorry. True to form, I'm hectically preparing for my new job, so here it is nipping at me again two entire years later. Here's to more anxiety and updating this poor thing again soon.

Ugh... This springtime cold is complete balls.

April 28, 2013

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**The Aristeia of a High School War Hero**

by Seph Lorraine

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It was common practice of the band to hold practice in sections in scattered areas around the band room every morning as the rest of the student body still dragged stiff, lifeless limbs and deadened brains onto campus like the living dead. It wasn't usually offensive, though, the sound of flutes trickling through swinging doors, the tapping of percussion on the lawn, but today a particularly offensive sound joined the mixture.

A group of four girls sat in a scattered circle on the cold floor of the hallway near the cafeteria entrance, trying wholly unenthusiastically to harmonize out a well known Ellie Goulding song.

Sasuke rubbed his temples like an old man, trying to pass quickly. Such unreasonable treatment for a song he quite liked, too.

The students were already filtering out of the cafeteria in groups, some heading to mingle at lockers and check in on their favorite teachers, whilst some ran frantically to homeroom to complete unfinished homework assignments and cramming for today's "pop quiz" that had been stupidly announced beforehand making it much more of a doleful thud then a surprising pop.

The dark-haired Uchiha, effortless valedictorian of the senior class as he was, moved through the chaos with an ease acquired from years of public education and oddly uncharacteristic knack for getting lost in shopping malls. He dropped by his locker, depositing his physics and calculus materials, and squeezing out a thick white volume on the classics for literature instead, then headed for homeroom.

He was the first as usual, aside from the teacher. She was a tall, voluptuous woman in a plunging neckline that seemed a bit distasteful given her position as an educator.

"Early as ever, Uchiha." She grinned up at him, her voice having a tendency to lilt as though her every utterance were sarcastic.

"Hn." The pale boy grunted, dropping his heavy, black messenger on the floor beside his desk before following suit into the chair with little ceremony.

"I trust you've got a string of girls in line for prom, then?" A question, but not a question. She never raised her eyes from a stack of papers on her desk, marking something with a blue pen occasionally.

Sasuke sighed. He loathed the banal notion that simply because the majority of girls in a sizable radius agreed that his physical characteristics were of a desirable nature, that he was somehow a skirt-chaser. "Sure, like fifty."

The teacher glanced up at him, something like a twinkle in her eyes but said nothing else.

Sasuke pulled out his literature book and flipped through it dully. There was a sonnet or something he had forgotten to read. He ignored the slowly incoming students and began scanning the pages.

Ah, number one-hundred and thirty.

_My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,_

_Coral is far more red than her lips' red;_

No one actually has red lips.

_If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;_

_If hairs be wires, then black wires grow on her head._

Sasuke paused for a moment to think about breasts. They were something of a mystery to him.

_I have seen roses damask'd, red and white;_

_But no such roses see I in her cheeks;_

The page and a field of mental scarecrows loomed before him.

_And in some perfumes is there more delight_

_Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks._

Sasuke had no recollection of drifting off, but was suddenly pulled from his shallow nap by the bell.

A thin, tan figure in a musky orange hoodie practically skidded through the doorway.

The bell came to a dull, electronically resonating stop.

"Uzumaki. You're late. See me after class."

"I'm not!" Blue eyes widened frantically. "I'm not! I was right on time."

"You're to be here by the bell, not with it. After class."

Naruto opened his mouth to protest.

"After class."

Sasuke felt himself tense as the lanky blond groaned loudly and headed down the row to his usual assigned position beside the Uchiha.

Suddenly Sasuke wondered if he hadn't done something as unseemly as drooling during his unexpected nap and leaned over his book quickly, wiping at his mouth and chin in a paranoid manner. When he leaned back and glanced around; no one seemed to have noticed.

"If you have your prom dues hand 'em in." Tsunade started, rifling through a small memo pad.

There was a loud groan from about half the class and scuffling as people went through bags.

Naruto didn't budge in his seat, staring lifelessly at the back of the petite brunet seated in front of him. After a long moment of feeling like he was being observed, blue eyes turned slowly to regard the Uchiha to his right.

Sasuke stared at him blankly, unsure of why he was staring to begin with or how to react now that he had been caught. He wasn't accustomed to exchanging dialogue with the object of his recent attentions.

The blond stared back for a long moment and nodded slowly in some sort of awkward greeting.

"Are you dating whatsherface?" Sasuke didn't even realize the words were slipping from his own tongue until they were out. He was just relieved that it sounded like some sort of awkward socially-uncalibrated interrogation rather than some worried, lovesick suitor. Though he had to unhappily admit that his warped psyche fell strongly in the latter direction.

Naruto frowned slowly, "You might need to be more specific."

"The girl with the colored hair." The Uchiha blinked dully.

"Sakura? Uh... no." A tanned hand raised suddenly to rub awkwardly a tanned neck, eyes falling to his desk top, "She doesn't like me like that. I'm sure if you asked her to the prom, she'd be really happy, though."

Sometimes Naruto wanted to beat himself for feeling so unnecessarily obliged to others.

Sasuke frowned at the strange, subtle display of self-pity and spoke again without thinking. "I like guys."

"Yea..." The blond nodded absently but quickly snapped to attention again, turning to face the other boy with wide eyes as he replayed the simple, unaffected admission in his head, "I'm sorry, what?"

"I'm not interested in girls. I like guys." Dark eyes countered blue blankly.

"Oh." Naruto nodded again, lips drawing together in a curious, pondering pucker. He regarded Sasuke oddly, trying to push down a sudden tidal wave of confusion as to why the pale, stone-faced valedictorian who never spoke to him or seemed to have ever paid him as much as an ounce of attention was telling him this somewhat socially controversial information as though it were the weather, "That's cool."

Sasuke did not know how to take the comment.

The morning announcements started.

The blond frowned weirdly and tried not to appear to relieved when the bell rang for first period.

* * *

Gaara could not see straight.

He sat slumped with lethargy against the counter top of his home economics class, staring blankly at the flecks of metallic white inside the black granite. He didn't know how a public school that couldn't afford to maintain a stable arts program could afford granite counter tops for an elective class that only the most unfortunate and apathetic of students ended up in, but that was not the issue of the moment. The issue of the moment was much more dire: Was there a quiz in second period? Because if there was, he had completely forgotten.

At that moment, as though a slap in the face from Zeus himself, the topic that had completely erased any school related thoughts from his mind the previous evening, waltzed in and took his seat upon the stool in front of the weary redhead.

Naruto tossed his binder and a single pencil down on the counter top, paying no mind when the pencil went flying off the other side of the small island. He had never been one to carry much on him.

Students were still trickling into the room slowly, so he took a moment, glancing around until his eyes fell on the slumping form behind him.

Vacant, expressionless, heavily lined eyes looked up slowly at the beam of lucent sunshine before him regarding him with a soulful blue gaze. Sometimes Gaara's own mental monologue made him want to throw up.

"Is there a quiz in Lit today?" The redhead bit quickly, more an effort to calm the bile rising toward his esophageal sphincter than anything else.

The blond raised a brow pensively, wondering if that wasn't the first thing he had ever heard the somewhat scary-looking kid say. "Uh... I don't know. Probably."

Gaara could feel the sweat on his palms. Fuck, what was he going to do.

After a few minutes of further silence, the other students filed in and the teacher (a tall, brusque man who was forever smoking near the vestibule) slipped back in, shutting the door.

"Ok. Today we're talking about muffins."

Gaara reached into his bag and pulled out the lit book and began to scan the assigned reading from the evening for the literature quiz.

_I love to hear her speak, yet well I know_

_That music hath a far more pleasing sound;_

Shakespeare appears to have had very low standards.

_I grant I never saw a goddess go;_

_My mistress, when she walks, treads on ground;_

The young redhead pondered this, trying to comprehend why there was such a palpable irony in the words. He had long recognized and accepted that he was a complete and utter romantic. If he loved someone, which was a drastically rare occurrence in his so far 18 years of experience, then he loved everything about them. It felt almost counter-intuitive to consider someone's closest person being so unideal.

_And yet, by heaven, I think my love is rare_

_As any she belied with false compare._

He stared at the page, wondering if his thoughts alone could make it catch fire and burn to a cinder, when he was shaken out of his mental reverie once more by Naruto, who had spun around on his stool and was now staring him down again bemusedly.

Gaara stared back in silent question.

"I guess we're bakin' muffins together."

If he had had eyebrows, the quiet boy might have raised one. Is that what people were calling it these days?

Naruto gestured behind him at the board.

**AFTER SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT**

**MUFFINS: BAKE WITH PARTNER.**

**PASS OR FAIL.**

"What kind of muffins?"

"Didn't you hear anything? Good ones. Your place or mine?"

Gaara felt the anxiety rise again. If he was going to make a move and stake his claim on the object of his desire, this was his chance. But if he did, he might as well be stabbing his best friend in the back.

The blond, however, continued to await his answer.

Fuck it. "Mine."

Somewhere across the world people cleared the streets after a massive bombing. Somewhere across town a waitress dropped a tray and lost her job. Somewhere across the school a group of girls were still bastardizing the hell out of Ellie Goulding, not that he gave a shit.

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To Be Continued.


End file.
